Webmail accounts come and go these days. Facebook is bringing e-mail to its Messages service, while Canada.com just told its users to clear out and pack up before the service closed for good Dec. 8.

It’s no surprise that Facebook wants to get in on the Webmail game. While its service won’t actually offer a new Webmail account (it will plug-in to existing mail accounts), it will encourage users to stay on Facebook instead of venturing off-site to read their messages. And in Canada, Webmail is popular.

A recent poll conducted for ITBusiness.ca shows. Delvinia’s AskingCanadians poll shows that 56.4 per cent of online Canadians over the age of 18 prefer Webmail over the e-mail provided by their internet service provider (ISP).

Using a Webmail account makes sense for a couple of reasons. First, if you change your ISP, you don’t have to change your e-mail address. Second, you can easily access your e-mail from any Internet-connected device.

Canadians preferred Microsoft’s Hotmail or Live.com accounts over others, with 58.5 per cent saying they used those services. Another 36.4 per cent used Google’s Gmail, 23.9 per cent used Yahoo! Mail and 30.2 per cent used other Webmail services.

If some of those were Canada.com, they may shift to Gmail after Dec. 8. The Postmedia Network-owned service gave instructions specifically detailing how to transition to Google’s service.

Facebook also gauged its users habits correctly (in Canada at least), according to the poll. When Canadians look to supplement e-mail with another messaging service, they most often use Facebook Messages (27.6 per cent) although 39.3 per cent prefer to only use e-mail.

Another 16.2 per cent use SMS texting in place of e-mail, and 15.9 per cent use instant messaging instead. Just one per cent said they’d use Twitter instead of e-mail.

This AskingCanadians poll of 1000 respondents was conducted for ITBusiness.ca. The data was collected from November 19th to November 23rd. AskingCanadians is an online survey community with a panel of more than 160,000 members across Canada. Joining the AskingCanadians panel is free to Canadians who are in the age of majority in the provinces they reside, or have the permission of their parents or legal guardian. Qu’en pensez-vous is the sister community in Quebec. AskingCanadians is owned and operated by Delvinia Data Collection for more information go to http://www.delvinia.com/askingcanadians.